The present invention relates to a process and program for the configuration of a computer systems and particularly networks such as local networks of server computers and client computers in a manner which is expeditious and involves very little down time of the system or network.
Computers and their application programs are used in all aspects of business, industry and academic endeavors. In recent years, there has been a technological revolution driven by the convergence of the data processing industry with the consumer electronics industry. This advance has been even further accelerated by the extensive consumer and business involvement in the e Internet. As a result of these changes, it seems as if virtually all aspects of human productivity in the industrialized world require human/computer interaction. The computer industry has been a force for bringing about great increases in business and industrial productivity. Almost every week seems to bring computer industry advances which promise even further increases in productivity. These advances offer to drive down business and industry costs and increase efficiency in addition to increasing productivity. In addition, the cost of xe2x80x9ccomputer powerxe2x80x9d continues to drop as result of rapid advances in computer related technologies.
Despite all of these advantages there still remains great resistance in all industries and business fields to new computer systems and significant system upgrades which offer much in productivity increases. This resistance results from past experience which equates to installing new computer systems or significant upgrades in existing systems with large amounts of down time, during which the business, manufacturing facility or individual worker functions are inoperative or operate at diminished levels. When a business or production facility is trying to decide whether to install a new computer system, the concern about down time, the possible loss of business, as well as stress on the workers involved very often outweighs the cost of the installation in influencing the decision. The concern about business and production delays resulting from installation has become so great that fewer and fewer small businesses are trying to make system and program changes on their own. This concern is even greater when the business is considering the installation of a computer network. While many businesses would likely be much more productive if their computers were interconnected with each other, the thought of a network may be very frightening to many small businesses without too much computer experience.
As a result of these needs, the professional computer service industry which carries out and supports installations and upgrades for the business and industrial sectors has been rapidly expanding over the past decade. However, even with such computer professional support, the threat of such down time, coupled with the costs of such professional services caused by installation delays, remains of great concern.
Because of this expanding demand for computer and network installations, many major installation and service providers have been expending great amounts of research and development efforts to develop systems and programs to expedite such computer system and network configuration installation and upgrades. Many of the major installation and service providers are also manufacturers and distributors of computer components, both hardware and software. In such cases, the providers are usually adequately compensated for their expenditures by the sale of their components used in the systems. On the other hand, there has arisen substantial numbers of seller or xe2x80x9cresellerxe2x80x9d computer installation organizations which market the installation and upgrade of computer systems and networks to businesses. Since businesses demand and expect the best total solutions for their needs from such resellers, it is often the case that the best computer system or network that the reseller installs uses few or no computer components manufactured or distributed by the developer and owner of the system and programs used to configure the system or network. The result is a dilemma for those involved in the installation and configuration of computer systems and networks. It would be advantageous for everyone in the industry to continue to use the programs and systems for the configuration of networks and to encourage the development of even more advanced systems and programs to do so. On the other hand, a way should be found for compensating the developers of such programs for their efforts. One approach would be to charge the sellers or resellers of such programs set fees for their use. However, in this regard, the manufacturers and distributors who developed the configurations have valid concerns that any basic fee costs would discourage the use of such programs and, thus, the consequent sale of their computer components.
The present invention affords a solution to the above problems in which the distributer or manufacturer of the computer components, which has developed the process for configuring computer systems or network, provides to the seller or reseller a configuration process comprising a prompting system or computer purchasers to make a sequence of interactive data entries, each of said entries relative to the data processing needs of the purchaser of one of said computer systems, allocating said computer components to said computer systems based upon said user entries, tracking the quantities of said computer components thereby allocated to computer systems sold by said seller to said purchasers during a selected time period, and determining to forego fees due from said seller to said distributer for said process when said quantities of components thereby allocated during said time period exceed a selected level.
The present invention may be most advantageously used when the computer system or network configuration process is of the type described in the above cross-referenced copending patent applications, 09/118,208, 09/118,211, 09/118,210 and 09/118,560, all filed on Jul. 17, 1998. Because such configuration processes already involve considerable tracking and storage of data relative to the computer components selected for the various systems and networks being configured, it only requires little additional resources to relate the quantities or types of components sold for or used in the configured systems to the manufacturer or distributer. The present invention is advantageously used in the processes of these copending applications when the data entries being made relate to demographic aspects of the business environment of the purchaser of the computer system or network.
The invention is further applicable when the allocated computer components are of different types, the quantities of each of the different types are tracked, and the fees are determined to be foregone when the quantity of at least one of the different types of components allocated during said time period exceed selected levels.